


Language Such as Lovers Use: broken words, inarticulate words

by R00bs_Teacup



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-27 00:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6261439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joss Bixby was in love with Kay. He always loves Kay, in every story. In every story is Jay Gatsby, or Joss Bixby, and Daisy, or Kay. It is their story and their love and everything else can only be peripheral. But this time, it's not quite like that. It's not like that at all, in fact. But how do you tell a story that everyone knows, that everyone believes in, that is The Love Story of everyone's subconscious and consciousness? </p><p>This is one way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Language Such as Lovers Use: broken words, inarticulate words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/gifts).



> For Glim, as all my Endeavour fic must be, especially this as it is entirely not my fault at all that I knew Endeavour's episode was based off the book, or that I then read the book, or that I went into the book knowing it has been read as LGBT+. None of this is my fault at all, really, and I refuse to take credit or responsibility for it, basically. 
> 
> Also as a fill for a prompt on the Morse meme 
> 
> (morseverse.dreamwidth.org/1519.html?thread=9455#cmt9455)

It was summer. Everything happened when the world was soaked in sunshine. It always feels like that, for years afterwards. It feels like it was always warm, and light, with the thick quality of a hot day. Kay was beautiful. She seemed to be part of it, somehow. Of the summer. Of the sunshine. Her voice trickled with the heat, slow and syrupy and not disturbing the dust motes that hung. Morse can always see her, can always see her the way Bixby did.

 

Bixby gave him that.

 

“ _It's not going to rain, it'll never rain. It will be summer until whatever happens at the end. Summer's like a smile, isn't it, old man? Or is summer actually a smile, I wonder. The sun coming out, the heat, the… yes, the beauty. You should smile more.”_

 

That was Bixby. Conflating everything with Kay. He had been talking about Kay, before that. After that. Then. She was in everything he did and said. Unspoken, but there. Morse had always known that. Bixby could bring you in, too. He brought you so close you felt maybe some of it was for you. Maybe.

 

Bixby had tried to give Morse a car, and Morse always comes back to that- to the red Jaguar. The big cat, the power, the prowl. The car was always well named, stealing the cat's darkness and grace. Stealing the beautiful danger. Bixby had paused, after trying to tell Morse the car was his. A long pause, leaving Morse to drift in the sunshine, thinking of Kay. Bixby's thoughts.

 

“ _But if it's not a car you're here for, old man, what is it?”_

 

“ _You, perhaps.”_

 

Morse meant the case, meant that he was there to poke about because he was a policeman and couldn't escape it. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he hadn't meant that at all. He had been half in love with Kay because of Bixby, and so he hadn't noticed what was right in front of him, staring him in the face.

 

“ _You're a straight bat, old man.”_

 

Bixby had allowed it. Had invited Morse to the house, to search for his happiness, his joy. Had allowed Morse in, with him, to see Kay, to feel that. To Bixby, that had been love. To allow Morse a share in it, even if it was the wrong direction. Morse had been allowed to have some of Bixby's love of Kay. When Kay had kissed him, Morse had wanted to. She had asked if he was falling in love with her, and he hadn't been able to answer.

 

He had loved her, because that was what Bixby allowed him. That was what he had. It was, from Bixby, enough. From Bixby, it was a piece of the world. She permeated everything, even his love for other people. Morse he loved for his connection with Bruce. Morse never believes anything else. The last thing Bixby says to him is about her, is about his hope that she will come back. As if she were lost somewhere. Or as if he were.

 

Morse had said it was the change in mannerisms that tipped him off, that it was because of the 'old man' being absent in his speech, but really, it was her. Kay was the centre of the world with the twin, but she didn't permeate everything the same way. She wasn't summer. It rained even if she was there. No one talked about her the way Bixby could. No

one could talk about everything and yet it always be her he meant. And, if Morse was really honest with himself he sometimes thought that maybe, just maybe, he knew it wasn't Bixby, because Bixby did, after all, love Morse.

 

When Bixby came to the end of a sentence, Kay would be there. The words and the world, every inch of the house, every penny of the fortune, was Kay. Was Kay's. But when the words drifted with the breeze, when speech had settled, Bixby would look at Morse, and that was his. That was Morse's alone. That moment when the words were gone, when it was the two of them and they were not policeman and man-in-love, sometimes, fleetingly, there it would be. Bixby would turn his shoulders in a little, tilt his head, gesture. His eyes would warm, his lips almost smile. He would look at Morse and see Morse, not Kay.

 

There were moments. Only moments, only subtext, only suggestions. Morse could never be sure. But, then, when were they ever sure, when neither was a woman? How could it be anything else? What other story could be told? There was no way in which Bixby could have asked Morse if he was falling in love. In which Bixby could have suggested that Morse kiss him. In which Bixby could have taken Morse's 'you, perhaps', in any way but that in which it was taken.

 

Their love story could have been no different. There is no other way to tell love stories that do not include women, or love stories that do not include men. There is no way to tell them except in the margins, in the fragmentary moments, in the brush of a hand or the suggestion of a gaze or the heat of the sun. Morse had no way to tell Bixby that this is not Bixby's story with Kay. It was Bixby's story with Morse. It is Morse's love story.

 

What can you do when there is no space for those stories? You can only read the story one way, you can only see Kay. The world becomes her. The story becomes hers. Bixby becomes infatuated with her. If anyone telling the story lets him look aside, it ruins it.

 

So those moments are the story that is trying to be told. The pauses, the hesitations, the brushes. They stood shoulder to shoulder and talked of women because that was the permissible way to speak of desire. They looked across the land and water to Kay and they talked of her returning, of life returning to the route it was diverted from, because that is the way things must end. It can never be acknowledged that diversions are the beginning of desire lines in the grass, that we can, if we try, wear a path there. It can never be acknowledged that the divergence created an ending. It cannot. That happiness can only be fleeting. Fragmentary.

 

Morse took that fragment of happiness, and inhabited it as fully as he could. They talked about Kay's beauty as their hands brushed, they talked about Morse kissing Kay as they let their lips meet. They talked about her and they meant each other. They talked about her returning, and the yearning was for the present. For the moment that always moves on, taking them with it, taking them closer to the happy ending which means an ending. Which means an end to their happiness.

 

“ _It's not going to rain, it'll never rain. It will be summer until whatever happens at the end. Summer's like a smile, isn't it, old man? Or is summer actually a smile, I wonder. The sun coming out, the heat, the… yes, the beauty. You should smile more.”_

 

Bixby was talking about Kay, and Kay was there permeating everything. Bixby's desire permeated everything. His love permeated everything. 'You should smile more' was not the throw away, the unnecessary. It was said casually and the words wer all about Kay, the find phrase a mere comment without any special inflection, without any special passion or poetry. It was set apart, and so it was important.

 

It was important because Bixby said it to Morse, without looking at him, without daring to put any emphasis on it. If it was truly casual, it would not- could not- have been so flat, so uninterested, so without moment. Morse could do nothing but put his head back, close his eyes, let the sun soak into him, and smile.


End file.
